Don't Bogart that mic, my friend

That's funny, I almost could swear that "I smell just a little bit of weed in the air" every time I turn on what passes for television news anymore.

The terminal state

tri·age
Pronunciation: \trē-ˈäzh, ˈtrē-ˌ\
Function: noun

1 a: the sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors b: the sorting of patients (as in an emergency room) according to the urgency of their need for care

2: the assigning of priority order to projects on the basis of where funds and other resources can be best used, are most needed, or are most likely to achieve success.

(Merriam-Webster Online dictionary)

THE IDEA OF DIVERTING scarce resources, either medical or economic, from the hopelessly sick to those who have a fighting chance -- that is, with the added help -- isn't exactly new. If you've ever watched old M*A*S*H reruns, you understand the concept, as well as its application.

For an even longer time than the concept of "triage" has been around, Louisiana has been the Poor Man of America. The Sick Man of America, too.

In the late 1920s and early '30s, Huey Long thought a little all-American socialism funded by the Standard Oil and Refining Co., could cure what ailed his (Every Man a) Kingdom. It couldn't.

Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal couldn't make Louisiana look like a functioning, prosperous democracy, either. Nor, later on, could Huey's little brother, Earl.

More than a half-century down the timeline, Louisiana remains a place that's sicker, poorer and more uneducated than your average state. Crookeder and more licentious, too, as illustrated by this Associated Press report on the saga of indicted congressman William "Dollar Bill" Jefferson:

Despite the indictment, Jefferson won 56 percent of the vote in Tuesday's election, a primary runoff against former television reporter Helena Moreno. Jefferson, a stalwart Democrat who became Louisiana's first black congressman since Reconstruction when he took office in 1991, won more than 92,000 votes to Moreno's 70,159.

Moreno is white and struggled for support in a district where black registration is roughly 60 percent and where Jefferson has been a powerful political presence for nearly three decades.

(snip)

But Jefferson has shown remarkable political resiliency though his fund-raising and support from political officials have waned. He survived a challenge from a dozen opponents two years ago after news broke that he was under investigation and that federal agents said they found $90,000 in alleged bribe money hidden in his freezer. He drew fewer challengers and won just as easily this year, even after the 2007 indictment.
State Democratic Party leaders, asked for a comment, issued a statement through spokesman Scott Jordan: "The Democratic voters of the 2nd District have spoken, and the Louisiana Democratic Party respects their choice and supports Bill Jefferson."

Jefferson, on Tuesday, scoffed at political opponents and pundits who, he said, "are perplexed" at his success.

"We work hard for the people we represent and we deliver for them day in and day out. . . . That's why we win elections," he said.

MEANWHILE, 80 miles up the Mississippi River in the capital, Baton Rouge, voters decided against taxing themselves to fix infrastructure and expand its convention and tourism base.

And on a more meat-and-potatoes level, says The Advocate newspaper, Baton Rougeans also said no to building a new parish prison, replacing a police headquarters that's literally crumbling around the city's cops and rebuilding 38 dangerously substandard bridges.

Holden said many of the projects that were proposed as part of his half-cent sales tax and 9.9-mill sales tax are desperately needed.

As an example, Holden pointed to the $35 million needed to replace 38 bridges that are rated the same or worse as the bridge that collapse in Minnesota last year.

“We are not going to play Russian Roulette in this parish with those 38 bridges,” Holden said.

But Holden said that problems with the bridges and drainage are so severe because of past neglect that a new revenue source is needed to address them.

(snip)

The mayor-president said the proposal would have qualified for an additional $137 million in matching federal funds.

Although Holden’s proposal did not receive any organized opposition, there was some criticism that the $989 million program benefited mostly the city of Baton Rouge.

Two of the biggest projects, a $247.5 million Audubon museum and a $144 million expansion of the River Center and its parking, were both in downtown Baton Rouge. If the River Center expansion had been approved, a Virginia developer had pledged to spend $100 million in private money to build two hotels there.

Holden’s proposal included a $135 million parish prison, a $43.5 million juvenile justice center, $89.7 million for a public safety complex, and $26.2 million to replace eight aging fire stations.

Also included was $45 million to modernize and synchronize more than 200 traffic signals and $49 million to convert the Governmental Building into a City Hall after the 19th Judicial District Court moves into the new courthouse that is under construction.

WHAT WE HAVE HERE, obviously, is a state that's grown accustomed to lying in its own feces. Its residents refuse to invest today to prosper tomorrow . . . or to pull together for the common good. At all.

Hell, whole segments of the Louisiana citizenry refuse even to deny high office to the obviously, and embarrassingly, corrupt. (Ninety grand in cold cash, anyone?)

What we also have here, particularly since Hurricane Katrina, is a state with its hand perpetually outstretched to the American taxpayer, seeking a quick infusion of cheap grace.

But with the national economy in shambles, the financial system in ruins and the federal till emptied by intractable foreign wars and immense domestic bailouts, Uncle Sam increasingly will reach into his pocket for a little something for the beggar . . . and pull out a whole lot of nothing.

Welcome to the Age of Limits. Welcome to the age when the federal government might be able to pull some chestnuts out of various fires, but not all.

WHO TO SAVE? How to decide? Triage. You save the ones you can. You don't waste time or money on the ones you can't.

The question for Louisiana is "Can this patient be saved?"

If you ask this expatriate who knows the patient well, the answer would be "Probably not. No will to live."

Mein Gott im Himmel!

Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country. And John McCain is 72 and had cancer twice!

For Janice, wherever she might be

(OK, this post will have some rough language. And it will use the N-word. A lot. But to tell this story -- and to be true to the times I'm recalling -- it has to be done. Reader discretion is advised.)

* * *

I wrote this post more than a decade ago, and a version of it first appeared on this blog Dec. 16, 2006. It seems to me to be appropriate to run it again after the historic night we just experienced, a night when we learned Barack Obama, a black man, will be president and America's original sin seemed less onerous and more redeemable than it did a day ago.

Last night was for Janice Grigsby. This post is, too. God bless her, wherever she might be.

* * *

Joe's Barber Shop smelled of witch hazel, hot shaving cream and talcum powder. Of old magazines, the newsprint of strewn-about State-Times and Morning Advocates, and of sweat and cigarette smoke.

WHEN YOU OPENED the front door onto Scenic Highway, Mr. Joe's place might smell of complex hydrocarbons, too. The front gate of the Humble Oil and Refining Co.'s Baton Rouge complex sat slap-dab across the street.

One summer day in 1970, though, Mr. Joe's just smelled.

"My boy ain't goin' to school with no goddamn niggers," this fellow said from up in one of Mr. Joe's three barber chairs -- under the placard that proclaimed the establishment a proud "Union Shop" -- to expressions of sympathy from Mr. Joe, my old man and the rest. Fearing his son's life might be in mortal danger, the man was popping off about having his kid pack heat.

Blame it on the Feds. A federal judge had just ruled against East Baton Rouge Parish's grade-at-a-time "freedom of choice" school desegregation plan, which had taken effect in 1963, started with the 12th grade and worked its way down to the sixth grade. Starting in the fall, a "neighborhood school" plan would take over, coupled with voluntary majority-to-minority transfers. For the first time, all students in a school's attendance area -- black and white -- would go to the same school.

Not a popular concept in the all-white, working-class world of Joe's Barber Shop.

I was 9 years old.

Summer gave way to fall in 1970 -- to the surprise of many white folks (including, I imagine, the guy planning to arm his son), the world did not end -- and school opened, "integrated" under the neighborhood schools scheme.

"Integrated" Capitol High School was supposed to have 230 white students and 1,363 blacks. Five whites showed up for classes. And "integrated" McKinley High was supposed to have 81 whites and 1,051 black students. No whites showed up.

THAT FALL, I returned to suburban Red Oaks Elementary School, a sprawling, brick-and-concrete 1950s monument to homogeneity and bad taste that assaulted the eyes with its covered walkways and copious amounts of puke-green paint. My parents saw no need to place a snub-nose .38 in my book sack; there was little chance I'd face assault by some snarling black menace from "Bucktown."

Chances were much better that I'd be assaulted by gangs of snarling white menaces from North Red Oaks.

In the fall of 1970, I was starting fourth grade, and for the past three years I had hated all-white, de jure-segregated Red Oaks Elementary. The only thing worse than Red Oaks, I imagined, must be having to go to "the nigger school," which, I was assured, just might happen if I messed up bad enough.

In the fall of 1970, Janice Grigsby was starting fourth grade at Red Oaks, too. She hadn't had the opportunity to work up a good hate for the place; this was the first year she and her little brother could attend.

Janice was black, and though her family had lived just a few blocks from the school since before there was a school there -- before there was a neighborhood, even -- she had been barred from Red Oaks by force of law, relegated to "the nigger school."

I remember that Janice had skin the color of a Hershey bar, a pair of pigtails and a big smile. She was the first black person my own age I'd ever known. And despite almost a decade of racial indoctrination -- with warnings about "nigger music," "nigger rigs" and "nigger lovers," deliveries from "the drugstore nigger" and subtropical heat that left you "sweatin' like a nigger preacher" -- despite growing up with Jim Crow as the crazy uncle in the attic, I liked Janice. She was in Mrs. Anderson's class with me, and I found that I didn't care whether she was black, white, purple or green.

She was a friend.

I REMEMBER that Janice and I used to play together at recess. I'd pull her pigtails, she'd chase me, and we'd both have a grand time.

My folks had no real problem with this. Poor Southern kids during the Great Depression, they grew up around black folks. And the only difference between them and "the niggers" was a society and a legal system that placed blacks at the bottom of the pecking order and "white trash" a little bit above.

So, for some white folks, there was nothing overly unusual about playing with black kids. Or about being friendly -- not friends -- with blacks as an adult, so long as everyone remembered that God Almighty ordained that whites were the superior race.

On the other hand, you had problems if black folks got "uppity." Uppity included such concepts as sitting in the front of buses, voting and using the same restrooms as whites. Or going to school with whites.

I guess that, by 1970 standards, my parents were something less than white-supremacy hardliners. I know they weren't hot on the idea of racial integration, not by a long shot. But I suppose they figured that if the Feds were letting the "coloreds" (what polite white folks called blacks in 1970) into "white" schools, there was no use being mean to them, or in keeping your kid from playing with Janice Grigsby.

The powers-that-be at Red Oaks Elementary, however, didn't see things the same way.

MORE THAN three decades later, I remember one day when Janice and I were playing at recess, following the standard rituals of 9-year-old boys and girls. Soon enough, Mrs. Anderson got my attention, took me aside by a red-brick wing of classrooms and gave me a good talking to.

Maybe I ought not be playing with Janice, she gravely advised me. It didn't look right, she was worried about it, the Red Oaks administration was worried about it, and white boys hanging around with colored girls wasn't wise. In 1970, it seems, certain white adults were worried about miscegenation, even among the playground crowd.

Janice Grigsby, one of two lonely black children among hundreds of white faces at Red Oaks Elementary, was to be isolated. Blackness was akin to the mumps, and the authorities were worried about infection.

At day's end, I walked across the playground, then over the foot bridge of heavy timbers and the pungent smell of creosote, then across Darryl Drive and down the sidewalk to home. My mother was waiting, and I told her I couldn't play with Janice anymore.

She was outraged. To this day, I'm not sure where that outrage came from -- perhaps it was that defiant suspicion of authority bred into a class of white folk raised dirt poor and accustomed to being beaten down by the powers-that-be. Maybe it was a subconscious compulsion to do the right thing despite her own prejudices and enculturation. Maybe it was the invisible hand of God determined to see that such blatant injustice, such cruelty directed toward a 9-year-old girl, not pass unnoticed.

Whatever it was, it caused my mother to go straight to the phone book, look up the number of the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, pick up the telephone and give whomever answered at the NAACP an earful about the shenanigans going on at Red Oaks Elementary School.

IN AN OLD MOVIE, the outrage of the righteous would have come down foursquare upon the heads of Mrs. Anderson and her partners in crime, and Janice Grigsby would have lived happily ever after. But old movies are just that, and morality plays were long out of fashion by the dawn of the '70s.

Life did not get easier for Janice. Her black face stood out like a bulls eye in Red Oaks' lily-white world, and she took her shots from Mrs. Anderson, a surly, tanklike woman who had about as much business in the classroom as Pol Pot would have had on Amnesty International's board of directors.

No, for Janice, ridicule at Mrs. Anderson's beefy hands became a daily ritual.

For instance, every Monday was lunch-money day, and the proper procedure for paying for the week's meals involved paying separately for your lunch and for your milk -- or something like that. One Monday, Janice did something horrible. She brought a single check from home to pay for everything.

You would have thought Janice had just set fire to the classroom.

"What am I supposed to do with this!" Mrs. Anderson thundered. "Cut it in half?!?"

The classroom erupted with the laughter of small minds. The cruelty of a middle-aged teacher toward a little girl is really funny when you're 9, I guess.

But Janice just sat there. She just took it.

I am not sure why this is the incident that sticks in my mind after all these years and all these miles away from Baton Rouge. There were others, many others. But as the years have passed, those incidents have subsided into the fog of memory. All that remains is the surety of Mrs. Anderson's withering remarks, the hoots of my classmates and Janice just sitting there.

Taking it.

And I remember that I hated Mrs. Anderson. I really did, and I don't know that I'm sorry I hated her.

I left Red Oaks Elementary after the fall semester of 1970. Like Janice, I was the butt of many jokes and much abuse -- at the hands of Mrs. Anderson and little rednecks with littler minds. I didn't fit in, probably was too smart by half when being smart was a one-way ticket to Adolescent Hell, and I rebelled mightily.

I ended up at the next school over, Villa del Rey Elementary. It was a much better school, though I still had my problems.

My new fourth-grade teacher was Mrs. Hawkins. She was black, talented and a sweet soul amid a sea of, on average, slightly more affluent little rednecks. I spent a while catching up on my studies, thanks to the curricular deficiencies Mrs. Anderson brought to the classroom along with her sunny disposition.

In many ways, it was Mrs. Hawkins who caught hell at the hands of her students. More than once, students might be heard to mutter "nigger" under their breath after being disciplined. I know she had to have heard, but I don't remember her ever saying anything.

And I am ashamed to admit to being among those who muttered the N-word. Like they say, racism isn't congenital; it's learned. And oftentimes we learned all the wrong lessons.

I DIDN'T SEE Janice Grigsby again until seventh grade at Broadmoor Junior High, where there was just a small handful of black kids. We didn't hang out together anymore, but I did notice one thing about her -- it seemed that her smile wasn't so big anymore. At least not often.

The dresses she once wore, I recall, had given way to a denim jacket and pants. It was fitting; she seemed to me at the time as this James Deanlike loner amid the junior-high hustlin' mob. I don't think we spoke much, if at all, during those years. But then again, the black kids had their world, and we whites had ours. The teen-age rednecks and thugs ruled supreme -- and perhaps the Mrs. Andersons of the world had won our hearts and minds.

Too, somewhere along the way at Broadmoor, Janice had to repeat a grade. I wonder whether maybe she, at some point along the line, had bought into the subtext of Mrs. Anderson's daily barrage: Niggers are stupid. Niggers don't belong. You're stupid, Janice. You don't belong.

From time to time, I wonder whatever became of Janice. Did she graduate? Is she happy? Did she ever come to terms with how that old battle axe treated her?

Is she married now? Does she have kids of her own? Grandkids?

Is Janice alive?

Of one thing I am sure: Janice Grigsby was a real little girl who suffered in very real ways due to the aftershocks of America's Original Sins -- slavery and bigotry. One's dead and buried; the other's still alive, burrowed deep into the American psyche like a mutant gene unleashing deadly cancers.

Yes, I'd like to think things weren't as bleak as my 9-year-old eyes viewed them; at least I would like to think my memories of Red Oaks, and Janice, have been darkened, have been fogged over, by the jadedness of adulthood.

But I don't think so.

And I don't think things are as changed as lots of people -- lots of people white like me -- would have us all believe. Better, yes.

Good? Probably not.

It was four decades ago, now, that Martin Luther King Jr., died. He was a great man.

And somebody shot him dead. Shot him dead for his greatness.

Somebody'd probably shoot him dead today, too.

God help us. Lord, have mercy.

Oh, puh-leeze!

Apparently, America's Catholic bishops have been talking to themselves. This may be news to them.

But with prelates across the land gravely warning Catholics about voting for pro-abortion candidates -- and with those same Catholics studiously ignoring them to the tune of breaking 55 percent to 45 percent for the abortion enthusiast Barack Obama, according to exit poll data -- the fact of bishops' soliloquizing seems indisputable. Their moral authority seems to be about equal to the man Americans electorally recoil from tonight -- George W. Bush.

This is a painful thing to consider if one is a believing Catholic. Catholics believe -- well, Catholics used to believe -- that the church's teaching authority rests on the shoulders of their bishops. Catholics used to believe those men literally held "the keys to the Kingdom."

Catholics used to believe these men were their shepherds.

The shepherds have lost their flocks. And it has been their own damned fault.

OF COURSE, with such an ecclesiastical calamity being as horrific to contemplate as it is observably true, "orthodox" Catholicism's "amen corner" finds it much easier thing to dwell, instead, upon the persecution they see as being sure to befall us at the hands of Evil Secular Humanism.

The persecution that was to befall us in 1992. Or 1996. Or 2000, if we hadn't gone for Bush 43.

Now, folks like Steve Kellmeyer are pretty sure we're really gonna get it now:

We don't have to be happy, we do have to be joyful.

Being happy is being comfortable, healthy and well-fed.
Being joyful is knowing that God's plan is being worked out,
and our obedience and submission to it contributes to His glory.

Jesus was not happy on the Cross, but He was joyful.

We fast and pray, we ask for mercy, but we accept whatever comes, punishment or pleasure.

Times of persecution were prophesied.

If we are found worthy to be subject to them, we should rejoice.

"Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

"My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.

"It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

"Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no "root of bitterness" springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled; that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent, though he sought it with tears."—Hebrews 12:3-17

Every drop of blood shed by the abortionist's scalpel will have to be repaid.

Perhaps we have been chosen to participate, be God's co-workers, as St. Paul said, in this work of redemption ...

Conversely, if the Butcher from Chicago fails in his bid, then we must raise our voices in the ancient hymns:

Non nobis, Domine, Domine,
non nobis, Domine
Sed nomini,
sed nomini,
tuo da gloriam.

Not to us, Lord,
But to your Name, be all glory.

FIRST, MR. KELLMEYER, I saw the campaign Sen. Obama's opponent ran. I know what the Butcher from Arizona stood for -- slightly less bloodshed at home, a lot more bloodshed abroad. A John McCain victory would have been nothing for which to thank the Almighty.

We pro-lifers thanked God for the victory of George W. Bush. Magnanimously, as it turns out, we blessed the name of the Lord for the judgment that was to befall us. And George W. Bush, indeed, has been a harsh judgment upon this land.

As for the Catholic Church, though, I fail to apprehend what calamity President Obama can visit upon it that it hasn't already visited upon itself. When apostasy has become normative and shepherds have been thoroughly corrupted, the only thing left for Caesar to do is kick around a corpse.

Unseemly, yes, but the damage already has been done.

The Catholic Church tonight is one where the flock heeds not its shepherds' voice. Which is no big deal when the shepherds have so little to say. At least lately . . . except to issue commands to a flock which no longer knows why, exactly, it ought to listen anymore.

FOR 14 YEARS, my wife and I volunteered in Catholic youth ministry at our suburban parish. It was a tenure I recall through the small minority of kids we saw emerge out of the youth ghetto into an adult relationship with Jesus Christ and His church.

Our parish is a large one. For 14 years, the percentage of our Catholic kids bothering to engage with the parish's ministry to them has been a small one. The number of kids emerging from that process to show real signs of still believing any of that stuff is smaller yet.

For our Catholic youth, as for their Catholic elders, their professed faith is one thing, their lives and practical beliefs are another thing entirely. For the most part, never the twain shall meet.

For the past 20 years, almost, my experience of Catholicism has been one of a mighty struggle for faith, a slow realization of the implications of that faith and an up-and-down process of living it. For nearly that long, my experience of the future of my church has been of a church pandering to the indifference of young people little interested in anything she has to offer -- a dysfunctional dance of a self-doubting institution desperate to be cool and popular but not necessarily respected.

Did I mention, also, intellectually denuded and culturally tone-deaf?

Likewise, I have watched bright young people, hungry to follow the Spirit's promptings, be disrespected, marginalized, scandalized and bored right out of Catholicism. And perhaps right out of any meaningful relationship with Christ.

THERE ARE serious consequences when a church makes grand claims for itself, then turns around and acts as if those claims are without meaning. From my perspective, here in the middle of America, I see a dying church.

I see a landscape where orthodox Catholic faith is ever more countercultural. And that's just within your average Catholic parish.

I also survey a landscape where those who most vociferously claim the mantle of "orthodox" Catholicism often confuse party politics and peculiar subculture with religious truth and "authentic Catholicism." They are as clueless as their heterodox, reverse-image dopplegangers in the church.

I suspect neither extreme would recognize "authentic Catholicism" if they saw it. In these times, in this church, who would?

LONG STORY SHORT, if persecution the church is to face, it is in large part because the Catholic Church -- for all intents and purposes, as a whole, in this country -- has cast aside the Great Commission:

The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.
17
When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.
18
Then Jesus approached and said to them, "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
19
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit,
20
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age."

MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, the pro-life movement wouldn't, late this election night, find itself in such shambles politically if religious Americans -- particularly Catholic Americans . . . especially their shepherds -- had taken care of basics before playing politics.

Culture precedes politics. Always.

American Christians . . . American Catholics forgot that. And all Steve Kellmeyer's (for one) hyperpietistic faux submission to God's will in the face of anticipated persecution ultimately will prove no substitute for Catholics actually getting off their asses and loving their neighbor. Not to mention teaching their children.

Just like Jesus told them to do in the first place.

See it now . . . if you have the stomach

Click on picture for video.

Where have you gone, Ed Murrow? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

We are no longer a serious people but are, on the other hand, manifestly stupider than we used to be. Journalism's -- and society's -- grown-ups are mostly all dead now, and we cultural riders of the short bus are on our own.

I DON'T KNOW, perhaps nicotine has gotten a really bad rap in the last 50 years.

At any rate, here's the link to the page containing the Edward R. Murrow interview, conducted on WGBH television in 1959.

That is all. I'll post this without further comment because, frankly, what the hell else is there to say? The primary-source material speaks for itself.

Dump 'em if you've got 'em!

Let the mad rush begin!

With Nebraska's legislature set to meet in less than two weeks to take away Americans' right to use our fair state as a giant recycling bin for teens who have outlived their usefulness (and Mom's patience), parents have precious little time to unload their budding Norman Bateses and Debbie Downers. So expect the biggest rush to this part of the Great Plains since the signing of the Homestead Act as fed-up moms and dads try to beat the clock and hit it big playing Nebraska Dump 'Em.

AFTER ALL, Nebraska Dump 'Em (TM) is the only game in town where you win big by losing big!

The clock is ticking, and le deluge got under way Sunday with the abandonment of two 16-year-olds at Omaha hospitals, as reported by the World-Herald:

A teenage girl was dropped off in Sarpy County on Sunday afternoon, and a teenage boy was left in Douglas County on Sunday night.

Sgt. Larry Fasnacht of the Papillion Police Department said the 16-year-old girl was left at Midlands Hospital by her mother.

The girl had lived in Omaha before being sent earlier this year to live with her mother in Arizona, Fasnacht said. The mother left the girl at the Papillion hospital about 4 p.m., he said.

Fasnacht said he did not know whether the mother, who has ties to the community, brought her daughter back to Nebraska specifically to drop her off under the safe haven law.

About 11:20 p.m., a 16-year-old boy was dropped off at Children's Hospital in Omaha, according to dispatch reports. No other details were available.

Kathie Osterman, spokeswoman for the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, said more information would not be made available until today.

Since the beginning of September, there have been at least 19 instances of people wishing to use Nebraska's safe haven law, dropping off a total of 27 children — most at hospitals and one at a police station.

Keith Olbermann's special torment

Make a note: Saturday night was when Keith Olbermann and MSNBC's Countdown jumped the shark.

I admit to having enjoyed watching Countdown -- taking it for what it is, which most definitely is not a straight news show . . . what few of those exist anymore. I plead guilty as charged to loving me a good Bush-bashing, and few have been as good at that as Olbermann.

But.

Customers at the Mouth-Foaming Outrage Store are limited to "X" quantity of purchases, and Keith Olbermann tried to get away with buying 72 shopping carts full of "I'm pissed! PISSED, I tell you!" Note that "X" is less than 72, and the consequence was Ben Affleck's hilariously vicious sendup of Olbermann on Saturday Night Live..

As in the sad case of Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, I'm afraid Olbermann and MSNBC will find it would have been more merciful had the shark not been safely cleared.

3 Chords & the Truth: The show in pictures

3 Chords & the Truth. Get it here.

Be there. Aloha.

You don't tug on the speaker's cape. . . ?

Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist, is running against the speaker of the U.S. House, Nancy Pelosi, and bad things keep happening to her.

The latest: Someone shattered all the windows of Sheehan's San Francisco campaign headquarters and stole a laptop, the campaign said in a press release:

"It seems to have been a calculated intimidation tactic," said Tiffany Burns, the Cindy for Congress campaign manager. "One of our computers was stolen, but no other property was taken from our offices and no surrounding buildings were targeted. Clearly they wanted to both frighten us and to gather information." Total damage to the campaign office is currently estimated at more than $5,000.

The Cindy for Congress campaign recently chronicled a series of unusual events, including other threats of violence, in a statement issued on October 13th. In that statement, Cindy Sheehan noted "[t]he past few weeks have been a little strange at Cindy for Congress [...] the things that have been happening could just be coincidences, or a run of bad luck, but the climate for the possibility of campaign hanky-panky certainly exists."

Campaign staffers also note each incident, including today's early morning incident, has followed closely on the heels of a confrontation with Cindy Sheehan's opponent Nancy Pelosi. This morning's incident occurred after an on-air confrontation between the two candidates on KQED's public affairs program Forum with Michael Krasny on Wednesday morning.

"Each time we confront her, each time we ask her for a debate, each time we gain ground in the polls, something horrible happens," said Burns. "Once or twice might be a coincidence, but such a consistent correlation is hard to ignore."

CINDY SHOULDN'T SWEAT the small stuff -- like repeated vandalism and theft. It's not that big a deal.

After all, I'm sure theft and intimidation -- if done for the greater good -- must have been a source of hot Catholic debate among the doctors of the church throughout all of history.

Grievously wrong? Quite sinful? Who's to say?

Obviously, Cindy Sheehan must have had it coming. Or something.

Just kill me now, HAL. . . .

The Russians won't take this kind of crap like the Iraqis did at Abu Ghraib.

Think of it. You're a cosmonaut stuck for months and months in a single-wide in low earth orbit. There is no escape, unless you want to risk re-entering the Earth's atmosphere in that Soyuz escape capsule.

LIKE, "Is that one of the ones they fixed?"

So, pretty much, you're stuck.

And then. . . . And then. . . .

When you're on the International Space Station, you can't sit back and wait for tiny ballerinas, Hannah Montanas and Jokers to ring your doorbell on Halloween.

So what's a lonely astronaut to do?

Here's the answer to the homesick boos, from NASA and Omaha musician Chip Davis.

Davis and his group, Mannheim Steamroller, will have the astronauts on the station doing the "Monster Mash," snapping their fingers to "The Addams Family" theme and grooving to "Black Magic Woman" on Friday.

Music from one of the group's Halloween-themed albums will be beamed to the station.

"They're just shooting it up for something fun," Davis said Thursday. "That's a kick, isn't it?"

Astronauts on the space station spend weeks or months more than 200 miles from Earth, so NASA encourages them to unwind. Every morning, songs are broadcast to the station as a wakeup call. In 2005, former Beatle Paul McCartney performed at a live concert that was broadcast to the space station.

For Halloween, NASA selected Mannheim Steamroller's "Halloween 2." The group uses the synthesizer sound that gained fans for its wildly popular Christmas albums on songs associated with the ghostly holiday.

IF WHAT THE Omaha World-Herald reports is true -- and pray for the sake of avoiding nuclear war it isn't -- you might have some space travelers willing to risk re-entry without benefit of a space capsule. At least the end would be quick.

And without synthesizers.

McCain is shocked, shocked. . . .

Republicans: "But what about us?"

America: "We'll always have . . . no, never saw you before in my life."

THAT'S PRETTY MUCH where John McCain and Sarah Palin find themselves -- if the journalistic consensus is to be believed -- pretty much doomed to lose, perhaps badly, to a Democratic candidate who would have been pretty much unelectable a presidential election or two ago.

It's not that America has become much more liberal. It's that the GOP has messed things up that badly of late.

And now, McCain and Palin have been reduced to playing Captain Renault -- only not nearly so well as Claude Rains -- in the waning days of their allegedly doomed campaign. After all, when you have precious little to say for yourselves, what's a little hypocrisy to get in the way of slinging mud at Barack Obama, as pointedly noted by The Associated Press:

Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin accused the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday of protecting Barack Obama by withholding a videotape of the Democrat attending a 2003 party for a Palestinian-American professor and critic of Israel.

The paper said it had written about the event in April and would not release the tape because of a promise made to the source who provided it.

McCain and Palin called Rashid Khalidi a former spokesman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, a characterization that Khalidi has denied in the past. Both candidates said guests at the party made critical comments about Israel.

(snip)

McCain also has ties to Khalidi through a group that Khalidi helped found 15 years ago. The Center for Palestine Research and Studies has received more than $800,000 from an organization that McCain chairs.

On Wednesday, McCain said 1960s radical Bill Ayers had attended the same party in 2003. McCain and Palin have criticized Obama for his ties to Ayers and questioned what the videotape of the party might show.

"Among other things, Israel was described there as the perpetrator of terrorism rather than the victim," Palin said at a rally in Ohio. "What we don't know is how Barack Obama responded to these slurs on a country that he professes to support."

In a story published in April, the Times said Obama spoke out at the event on the need for common ground on the Israel-Palestinian issue. Obama has said during the campaign that his commitment to Israel's security is "nonnegotiable."

Losing at hangman

Click picture for video.

One month after Louisiana state Rep. John LaBruzzo (R-Third Reich) proposed paying welfare mothers to have their tubes tied. . . .

One year after the upheaval and protests in Jena . . . mostly about the evil symbolized by the hangman's noose. . . .

One generation -- almost -- after Louisiana narrowly turned back a neo-Nazi's gubernatorial bid.

ONE-HALF CENTURY after the first cracks appeared in the foundation of Jim Crow . . . we cease to be surprised that profound acts of hatefulness and bigotry still happen with some frequency in the Gret Stet -- my home state. In a land that never learns, it's not difficult to see why those of its children who have learned a thing or two keep heading for the exits.

This little story from WAFB television in Baton Rouge, I think, tells an important part of a much, much bigger story. The one about how sin -- especially "America's original sin" -- makes you stupid, and stupid makes you dead. In the fullness of time.

Especially if you're Louisiana, which already has issues with stupid.

Reports Channel 9:

Trash talk over college football has led to the first arrest ever in East Baton Rouge parish under a new state law making it a crime to intimidate using a hangman's noose.

Reggie Drummer, an employee at the engineering firm of Louis J. Capozzoli in Baton Rouge, says he and another co-worker were "trash talking" last week about the upcoming LSU vs. Georgia football game.

"Another guy was bragging for LSU, and of course I was rooting for Georgia at the time," Drummer recalled. "It was just all friendly and trash talking."

Drummer says he was told that if Georgia won the game, he would have a surprise waiting for him Monday morning.

When Drummer arrived for work Monday, he says he found a hangman's noose.

"I noticed the noose on the ground. I asked him about it, they all laughed at me like it was a joke," Drummer said. Drummer then called police.

An East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff's deputy who responded to the call wrote in his report that employees at the business "witnessed the accused making the noose earlier in the morning."

YOU'D THINK people with average consciences would be appalled. Stunned. Angry at the redneck mouth-breathers who would pull such a nasty stunt and call it a "joke."

If you would, you don't know my home state. Here's the first comment out of the combox on the Channel 9 website:

This is a joke, right? I have a friend that just had to quit her job because the new owner is African American...she was being discriminated against...in a BAD way! I am so sick of people going overboard on the race issue...get a life...get real...who cares??? We are discriminated against just as much, we just aren't allowed to complain about it!!!

AND HERE'S another one, which also ties into that "issues with stupid" thing:

I think that on the whole, white people in Baton Rouge are tired of reverse racism. I think that the noose arrest is rediculous. If this were a state other than a southern state, I have to wonder if we would even have this discusion.

WHY DO I feel a Randy Newman song coming on?

Barack the (almost) Lightworker

From YouTube:

Barack Obama risks lightning and thunder during his speech at Widener University in Chester PA. It was a rainy and cold morning but 9000 people still stuck around to listen to what he had to say in his "closing speech".

Media please credit: Chris Barrett & Xtian Bretz

TV outlets: To License the footage please contact chris(at)powerhousepictures.com

Check out my book Direct Your Own Life ( http://www.directyourownlife.com ) and thanks for Xtian Bretz for noticing the strike ( http://www.xtian.tv )

TV OUTLETS: If you are so desperate for content that you will license totally unremarkable junk for real money during recessionary times, call me instead.

Really, all you have here is shaky footage of a presidential candidate without sense enough to come in out of a thunderstorm. Then again, if the fool had gotten lit up by a lightning bolt, it would have given a whole new meaning to "lightworker."

But he didn't. So . . . feh!

ANYWAY, if you need some real footage, the Mighty Favog and Revolution 21 stand ready to help!

For a low, low price, I am prepared to offer for immediate national release (network or cable) previously unseen video of Molly the Dog going "Woowoowooooooooooooooooo!" really cute with her beloved sock in her mouth.

Now, that's some good television.

From the country that put the 'K' in chaos

Makadem says vote for The One who will bring goodness and light to all nations.

Oyez, "Obama Be Thy Name."

Americans must listen to this sage musical entreaty. Because Kenyans are all about choosing their presidents wisely.

'I won't go schizo, will I?' 'It's a distinct possibility.'

That wasn't oregano what Texicans been puttin' in their picante sauce.

And friends don't let friends make political ads while they're Texas toasted. Because at the bottom of that mine lies a big, big howler.

We are amused.

Brownies, anyone?

You know it don't come Big Easy

If one is of a mind to bear witness to an American city coming apart, bit-by-bit, amid the bitter fruit of great catastrophe, it might be instructive to bear witness to New Orleans' pre-eminent chronicler -- Times-Picayune features columnist Chris Rose.

EXHIBIT 1, from the Columbia Journalism Review:

For the next 4,000 words, Rose described a spiral familiar to many Katrina survivors: the “crying jags and fetal positionings,” the “thousand-yard stare,” the inability to hold conversations. “I’d noodle around on the piano, read weightless fiction, and reach for my kids, always, trying to hold them, touch them, kiss them. Tell them I was still here,” he wrote. “But I was disappearing fast.” Finally, Rose described how the anti-depressant drug Cymbalta helped clear away some of that darkness, enabling him to function again.
In few cities would such a personal account have received such prominent play—or elicited more than 6,000 e-mails. But Katrina has transformed how journalism is practiced at The Times-Picayune. It has blurred the lines between those who suffer and those who chronicle that suffering, and has challenged traditional notions of objectivity. And it has become a better newspaper in the process. Every reporter and editor was directly affected by Katrina, and the Picayune’s pages are suffused every day with outrage and betrayal—and with solid reporting. The paper has relentlessly investigated the Army Corps of Engineers, which built New Orleans’s faulty levees, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose response to the storm provoked such frustration and anger. It has sounded the alarm about Louisiana’s disappearing wetlands, which would render New Orleans even more vulnerable during the next hurricane. And it has sent reporters to Japan and the Netherlands to learn what makes successful flood-control systems work.

And the newspaper has bonded with its readers; the Picayune is an essential part of coffee-shop conversation all over the metropolitan area. At a time when dailies are wondering how to hold onto wandering readers, it has proven that a paper that claims a stake in its city’s survival, reporting with passion and voice, can remain an essential part of the civic conversation. “Other papers would kill to be that relevant,” says Harry Shearer, the actor and satirist and part-time New Orleanian.

No Picayune writer epitomizes this transformation more than the forty-seven-year-old Rose, whose journey through breakdown and redemption spurred a communal catharsis. “He bled for us in those columns,” says Linda Ellerbee, the former NBC anchor who covered Katrina’s aftermath for Nick News, a children’s broadcast. “He made it more real than any photo, any TV coverage could—more than Anderson Cooper crying on the air, more than Sean Penn going though the water in his boat. He let us into his dark places. In the old-fashioned, Biblical sense, he bore witness.”

(snip)

In fact, for Rose, recovery was proving harder than just taking a pill. Feeling impatient, he started upping his dose of Cymbalta. Then he added painkillers to the mix. He began withdrawing again, and losing weight, until he weighed what he did in eighth grade. His columns became “unrunnable,” says O’Byrne, who spiked three in a short span of time. “They were just angry, rageful rants against life and the universe.”

Finally, last April, Rose’s wife Kelly arranged for an intervention. She and O’Byrne, along with three neighbors, confronted the columnist at his house and urged him to enter rehab. He didn’t need much persuasion. Not only did Rose understand he was in trouble, but he had an additional incentive: he had also recently learned that he was a bone-marrow match for his sister, who had leukemia. “I thought, ‘I’m gonna save Ellen’s life and then write a story that will blow people away,’” Rose says. “And I get to be the hero.” Rose went into rehab for thirty days, kicking both the painkillers and the antidepressants. But not in time to donate marrow to his sister, who died three months later.

There is no thousand-yard stare on Rose’s face now. He is as transparent in person as his columns are. One afternoon last October, he brought forty copies of 1 Dead in Attic, the best-selling compilation of his post-Katrina columns, to a meeting of the Ladies Leukemia League in suburban Kenner. After a spirited talk—Rose repeatedly mocked the country-club neighborhood where they were meeting—his friend Jacquee Carvin raised her hand. “Is there anything else that you can personally impart to the leukemia society?” she asked. Rose let out a sigh. “You put me on the spot there,” he said.

“Just watch me and you’ll get through it,” Carvin replied.

Rose’s eyes welled up. “My sister died of leukemia in August,” he said, his voice choking. “I was her bone-marrow match, but we never made it.” He told the women about his struggle with depression and slide into drug addiction. “I was killing myself real fast. When I found out I was a bone-marrow donor, I said, ‘I’ve got to fix myself.’ And I went to rehab. So what happened was, instead of saving my sister’s life, she saved mine.”

These days, Rose laughs hard and cries easily. His marriage has dissolved, but he is hanging on. “I’m a work-in-progress,” he says, sitting on his new front porch near Tulane University and watching his children race in and out of the house. “I got these little guys; I gotta take care of them.” And Rose is trying to figure out the next step for his journalism. He’s writing fewer internal monologues and more reported stores. He feels settled into New Orleans for the long haul.

AND NOW . . . EXHIBIT 2, from Sunday's newspaper:

Chris Rose, a columnist for The Times-Picayune, was arrested Friday night and booked in an alleged domestic violence incident.

Rose, 48, caused a disturbance and refused to leave the home of a former girlfriend, according to a New Orleans Police Department report filed in Municipal Court.

Police booked him with a municipal domestic violence charge and disturbing the peace. The police report said Rose refused to leave the woman's home but does not mention physical violence.

The incident took place at about 7:30 p.m. in the 7400 block of Pearl Street, the report says.

Rose allegedly became involved in a dispute with a 34-year-old woman, his former girlfriend, and another man. Responding officers wrote in their report that Rose had a "strong odor of alcohol and slurred speech."

After being booked, Rose posted a $2,800 bond. He is scheduled to appear in Municipal Court on Monday morning, according to court records.

Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss declined to comment on the incident.

Reached Saturday afternoon by telephone, Rose said he "had the poor judgment to try to have a conversation" with the woman when it was clear she did not want to talk.

Rose said the woman's companion took offense and punched him in the mouth. Rose said he then left and was walking home when he was arrested.

NOBODY GETS out of this life unscarred. Nobody gets out of this life without screwing up big-time sometime.

These days, folks seem to be living that concept large in the City Formerly Known as Big Easy. Especially newspaper columnists of the sensitive type.

Like Ringo says:

It don't come easy,
You know it don't come easy.

Got to pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues,
And you know it don't come easy.

YEP. God help us all.

Calling Radio Free Omaha. Do you read me?

Mood: Sad. :.-(

I've just gotten back from a trip to 1968, and it has hit me exactly how dead radio is in America. Radio is dead in America because -- among other reasons -- nobody is going to ever again start a "progressive rock" radio station as a viable, commercial, over-the-air enterprise.

NOBODY IS going to do this, and then staff it 24 hours a day, seven days a week with live people who might know a little bit about what they were playing. Over the air. On free radio.

I'm sad because this is never going to happen again, and future generations will never understand the concept . . . or why "progressive rock" stations -- "underground" or "freeform," if you will -- gave so many in my generation such joy.

Well, for the short time they existed in any numbers, at least.

I try to do what I can with 3 Chords & the Truth in this new millennium, recording 90 minutes of freeform radio at a time for download on the Internets. It's good. But it's not the same.

Only old farts like me will know why that is.

ANYWAY, at least I can take you, for a brief moment, back to Nov. 5, 1968, with me. There, you can read along in the Gateway, the student newspaper at the newly minted University of Nebraska at Omaha (the former Omaha University), as a fledgling journalist tries to explain this exciting, new "progressive radio" thing to the young people of the great Midwest.

This is the story of KOWH-FM -- Radio Free Omaha:

Progressive rock music, which over a year ego started as a fluke, has now blossomed into a format at the Omaha FM radio station, "Radio Free Omaha."

This station replaced KOWH-FM.

It first went on the air Sep. 16, and plans on expanding its program to a 24-hour basis. As of now, air time is 2 p.m. to 1 a.m.

Currently the station has three disc jockeys. From 2 to 7 p.m.. Harold Lee Roberts leads the way with John Mainelli taking over from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. On weekends the station is disc jockeyed by Kevin Clark.

Progressive program music started over a year ago by Tom Donahue. Donahue, who has sometimes been called 'The voice of Hippie' set the format at radio station KSAN-FM in San Francisco. He is currently operations manager at KSAN.

“Radio Free Omaha” was founded by Program and Music Director, Tom Rambler. The station is located at 94.1 megacycles on the FM dial.

As pointed out by him, the advantage of FM over AM stations is is that it gives full sound stereo and is interference-free. Whereas AM stations lack these qualities.

Rambler said, "This type of radio broadcasting is going to replace AM radio." He continued, "The AM radio announcers and commercial aspects are not the same nowadays."

(snip)

Rambler said, "The key to the success of the progressive rock format is 'loose' . . . be free to experiment with sound ideas. Music will be the only reason for a listener to 'tune in.'

The announcer will be there to take the listener from one experience to another, in an easy going, mature manner. The announcer should he free to bring new ideas to his listener.

Progressive rock stations are so new that nobody knows, yet, what is what, except the theory that has been formed on the music. Progressive rock music means anything new and exciting . . . rock, country, jazz, classical, blues, R&B, every form of music."

Generally this music cannot be played on AM radio.

The music played from 1 a.m. to 2 p.m. is called guru. A guru is a guide who guides you from one music to another. This music takes on all forms. It is anything non-commercial.

(snip)

He said, "Our main support is from the coast. Especially from the 'head shops' and certain Hippie-oriented businesses."

He exuberantly exclaimed, "We're even growing faster than it is on the coast."

Just what type of music does this progressive rock movement air? It covers all areas of music. Some examples are: the Canned Heat, the Steppenwolf, the Wizard of Oz, the Hassels, the Bohemian Vendetta, the Spirit, and the Jiini Hendrix Experience, with many others.

FM stations carrying progressive rock music are: KGRD-FM, Las Cruses, N.M.; KCBH-FM, L.A.; WAVA-FM, Wash.; and many others.

The most elaborating sight is that progressive rock formats are turning many "dead weight" FM facilities into dynamic audience-grabbing radio stations with the potential for making money.

ALAS, Tom Donahue is long dead in San Francisco and, in Omaha, so is KOWH-FM.

And not many people are making money in radio anymore.

Methinks Biden doth protest to excess

OK, I think this Florida anchorwoman is just a little over the top in her questioning of Sen. Joe Biden, Barack Obama's running mate this presidential silly season.

Obviously, the Obama-Biden campaign thought so, too. Angry over "hostile" questioning, the men who aspire to global leadership knocked over the checkerboard and told the Orlando television station they weren't going to play anymore. Ever.

Nanny nanny boo boo to you . . . you meanies!

I THINK Barbara West went into the interview loaded for bear and looking to turn a political hide into a new rug for her Grizzly Adams cabin somewhere in the Everglades. Two problems with that, though.

One, it looked a little like someone had been slipping estrogen into Ted Baxter's coffee cup.

Two, it looked a little like someone had been slipping estrogen into Ted Baxter's coffee cup.

OK . . . three things wrong with Theodora Baxter's interview with Joe Biden.

One, it looked a little like someone had been slipping estrogen into Ted Baxter's coffee cup.

Two, it looked a little like someone had been slipping estrogen into Ted Baxter's coffee cup.

Three, you can't get top dollar for the pelts of pols with hair plugs. Hey, it's a tough market these days.

OTHER THAN THAT, there wasn't a thing wrong with Baxter's West's interview with Biden for WFTV. It was great television.

Her earlier softball interview with GOP presidential hopeful John McCain, on the other hand, sucked. It was dull. It broke no new ground. It was insipid, and it neither forced the senator from Arizona to stretch intellectually nor defend his positions.

Yuck.

But everything that was horribly wrong about West's interview with McCain was pretty right with her Biden interview. Yah, you betcha West was Ted Baxter in drag for both interviews, but at least her hostile goofy questions of Biden totally took the self-assured senator by surprise and knocked him off balance.

He had to engage the issues . . . even if the issues might have seemed like they were straight out of "if Fox News had bought WJM from Wild Jack Monroe."

Engaging the issues. Intelligently defending one's political positions. Gee, isn't that why we pay career pols like Barack Obama and Joe Biden the big bucks, anyway?

I DID MENTION that Obama and Biden seek to lead the United States of America, right?

Geez, if Joe Biden can't handle an unintentionally comical Florida anchorwoman, and Barack Obama's response is to yell "No fair!" and run home, what's their game plan for the Great Enemy Nations Acid Test the Delaware senator's been warning us about?

Vladimir Putin -- for one -- may be many things, but Ted Baxter he is not. And picking up your marbles and going home is not an option when you're playing with the Big Boys.

3 Chords & the Truth: Life on Mars

My new favorite TV show -- and trust me, there are few that I actually even bother with -- is ABC's "Life on Mars."

Being a sucker for both time-travel yarns and cop shows, this tale of a cop catapulted back to 1973 New York City had me at "Peace, man." Or, at least, when the first 8-track was slammed into the car stereo.

Trust me, this has everything to do with this week's edition of 3 Chords & the Truth.

ANYHOO. . . I remember 1973, though not 1973 New York City. But as far as I can remember, "Life on Mars" has gotten it right . . . although, in the name of full disclosure, 1973 didn't reach Baton Rouge, La., until about 1976.

The show has gotten me to thinking, though. What would I do if I found myself, without warning, back in 1973? What would I have to say to my seventh-grade self if I happened to run across me?

Apart, of course, from "Avoid polyester and wide, wide neckties" and "You look crappy in paisley shirts."

If I had the power to change things in 1973 -- knowing how stuff would work out, big picture, by 2008 -- what would I do? How would I manage to change the things that needed changing while preserving the things society would come to rue losing?

How do you convince people what looks like progress and freedom will come back to bite them -- or, more likely, their children -- hard in the metaphysical tush. Right now, I'm thinking of a whole high-school student body near St. Louis that's undergoing AIDS testing.

How'd we get from 1973 to that? Why would we have wanted to open up that Pandora's Box?

Well, the short answer is . . . we didn't. Who knew the "squares" might be right about a thing or two? Who knew there were worse things out there than what could be cured with a shot of penicillin? Who knew how easily we could blow up the nuclear family?

I'm not being facetious. Who knew?

No one anybody was listening to, that's for certain.

I CAN'T CONVEY, not really, how fascinating a concept time travel is to me. Especially back to a time I remember well. The protagonist of "Life on Mars," Detective Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara) was four in 1973. Something tells me part of the point of his mysterious time travel will be a profound journey of self-discovery.

I was 12 in 1973. I wonder what I would discover about myself -- and the world in which I grew up -- if I could again see those times . . . and my early-'70s self. This time through adult eyes.

To hell with the rest of society -- what would I change about me? About my interactions with my 1973 family and my 1973 friends and my 1973 world?

And would the revised and "improved" me still have what I hold most dear in 2008? That is, once I got there again.

I'm getting confused now.

OBVIOUSLY, if I had tried to deal with all this in detail during this week's episode of the Big Show, there wouldn't have been much time for all of the cool late-'60s and early '70s music we're playing this week. And that's the point of the show this go 'round -- "reelin' in the years" with some really fine music from Way Back When.

When our "Life on Mars" wasn't "Life on Mars," but instead just the way things were. And, all in all, it was all right.

So, let's go back to Mars this week on 3 Chords & the Truth.

Be there. Aloha.